I far exceeded my goal as my army is up to 86 models and 2300 points (basically the cost of the Tyrannofex). While I am finished with the A Tale of One Gamer series, I have decided to push this army on to 3000 points as I have time. I still want to add a Trygon (or two - I easily have enough units to build a two force structure army) and a second unit of Tyranids. I also like to max out each branch selection so I need another Fast Attack (the second spore mine unit doesn't really count as I would probably field a single unit of six) and another Elite choice - probably a Gargoyle Brood and Hive Guard Brood respectively.

One of the goals of this project was to concentrate on models I already owned. I bought the Tyrant Guard Brood, Lictor Brood, Zoanthrope Brood, and Tyrannofex - everything else came from my storage closet!

This has been a lot of fun. I don't know if I'll do another series like this next year, but I definitely plan to follow the 500 points/month model the next time I build a new 40k army. The pace was quite leisurely for me and left me time to work on other projects. Splitting between two armies was a great way to avoid burnout as well as each unit felt fresh when I sat down to paint!

The next thing I want to do with these armies (besides play some games) is set up my photo equipment and get some action shots with terrain - next year!

December 25, 2012

Late in the day, but things have been crazy around my house today! I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought everyone some great hobby related loot! I made out great with a copy of Forge World's Model Masterclass (vol 1), a Space Marine Drop Pod, and a box set of the Citadel Edge Paint Set.

There is also a couple of boxes on their way from Scotland with more shiny new Warfare Miniatures!

December 19, 2012

Seriously - I have the attention span of a four year old. I sat down at my painting desk and had no room to work. It was covered with various models, projects, paint pots, tools, and notebooks. I resolved to the clean the place up and get a fresh start for 2013 and am absolutely flabbergasted by the sheer number of manufacturers and periods represented.

Warfare Miniatures
I have a battalion of foot destined to be Nassau-Saarbruken-Ottweiler, half of which are painted - I'm going to make an effort to finish this unit before the end of the year. In addition there are four pikemen to add to Hamner's regiment, four or five artillery crewmen, a dozen grenadiers I'm going to paint as a unit of converged Dutch, several mounted officers, an aide on foot, and King William III. All of these have stayed on the table after the clean up...

Games Workshop
Mostly left over models and bits from my A Tale of One Gamer series, I have a pair of painted Zoanthropes (see them at the end of the month when the series wraps up), two tyranids still on the sprues, a half assembled Trygon, and various loose bits including three Forge World Spore Chimneys (out of production). There is also a squad of Space Marine Terminators assembled for my Red Scorpions. More 40k models include a Space Marine painted to test a color scheme for a new army I plan to build next year, an Imperial Pilot from the old Battle for Macragge set, and a rare mounted Commisar for the Death Korps of Krieg.

For Warhammer Fantasy I have a Bretonnian warband for Mordheim to fight my Empire warband, three River Trolls (no idea why other than the models are really cool and I wanted to paint them), and the Empire General on a griffon that I featured on this blog almost two years (I think he's been on the desk since that post). Finally there is a Empire Witch Hunter I bought to check out the finecast line when it was brand new (pricy, but very nice, BTW).

I also have 36 goblins and the goblin scribe from the Escape from Goblin Town set based on the new Hobbit movie.

Wargames Foundry
Two battalions of WSS models painted as French that I intend to put up for sale to get them off of the desk!

Eureka
I have an early French artillery crew than I plan to paint as Spanish to add another gun to my battery.

Claymore Castings
I really intend on building some small forces with these models, but so far I've only managed to paint four. Besides these four, I have another twenty of these excellent models crowded around them.

Renegade Miniatures
There are four ECW models painted as Jamestown militia for a skirmish project I am toying with.

Artizan Miniatures
I have a WW2 German mortar team and a single model carrying a panzerfaust to finish off a force for my Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery project.

Otherworld Miniatures
There is a giant scorpion for the fantasy force for the game above, plus a handful of goblins and kobolds and an expedition mule laden with adventuring supplies.

Reaper Miniatures
A massive Fire Giant towers over a handful of NPC types.

Ral Partha
A company of twelve Battletech mechs, long out of production. Half of them are painted and the other half are undercoated. I have dozens of these old models. My friends want to set up a campaign so hopefully next year I'll get some more of these painted.

Whew... much of this has been packed away and I now have room to work again!

November 30, 2012

Of course, I've already shown the Land Raider. The remaining additions gave some much needed speed to my force. The bike squad and attack bike will be fielded as one unit and the Assault Squad will normally support the bikes or the Vanguard Veteran squad.

Basically painted over the course of four months! I discovered that by alternating between the Space Marines and Tyranids, it was easier to keep the drive going and not burn out slapping the same colors on models day after day. It was also easy to paint 500-points a month and left me time to work on other projects.

When I started this project, part of the goal was to paint things I had tucked away in my game room. The only thing I purchased for the Red Scorpion army were the Assault Marine box and the Land Raider doors from Forge World. After all this, I STILL have enough unpainted kits to add another 1000 points easy, but I am planning on starting ANOTHER Space Marine army for 2013 that I've wanted to do for a very long time...

Anyway, this was a fun experiment - next month will see the completion of my 2000 point Tyranid army!

November 25, 2012

Warfare Miniatures will soon be offering 132 variants on
Cuirassiers for the period 1670 - 1721. This is achieved by having 22
sets of 3 unique sculpts available on both Standing or Galloping horse
variants. The range covers English, Irish, Dutch, French, German,
Danish, Bavarian, Austrian Imperial Circle, early Swedish, Saxon,
Spanish and a wide variety of smaller states from the Scanian Wars
through Sedgemoor, Ireland, Flanders 1689-1697, Rhineland, Italy,
Eastern Wars, Great Northern War, WSS in Flanders, Spain and Germany.

English helmets, Continental Helmets, Hats, Tricornes, Bareheads with
wigs and without, bandaged too. Cuirasses over coats under coats and
front plate only. Musicians with arm variants playing and resting.
Lances for standards with attachable finials and cords, arm variants
with pistols cocked, firing, swords at rest, up right and extended,
officers arms waving hats or tricornes.

November 7, 2012

Two billion dollars and 18 months of campaigning and the country ends up with essentially the same situation in Washington. Poor (or no) leadership on both sides. A bitterly divided government that won't be able to pursue any meaningful agenda for the future. Normally I hope for gridlock in D.C. because I think the less they accomplish, the better off we are. There are serious problems facing the country and I see few ideas offered to fix things and even less chance of both sides coming together even make the attempt.

November 2, 2012

This gives me one HQ, five Troops(!), one Elite (or two if I split up the Lictors), and one Heavy Support (a pair of Carnifex). Now for the fun part - because I already have so many Troop choices, getting to 2000 points in December will be easy with the addition of one of tank-sized monsters and one or two small units. I have no idea how effective this army will be on the table, but that is really secondary for now. When I get the chance to run some games, I can rework the list while I fill in extra units toward 3000 points!

October 27, 2012

Ok - I was supposed to be painting Tyranids for my 'A Tale of One Gamer' this month and I have made progress on that front (pics next week). However, I have also been working on a Space Marine Land Raider Crusader for my Red Scorpions army and rather than wait for next month I wanted to feature the tank in a post of it's own.

I am extremely pleased with the results. The skull and wings emblem on the upper hull was painted freehand which was something I've never really attempted. I took a photo of the top of the model, imported the image into CorelDraw, and designed the graphic to size. I printed this to use as a reference. After painting the hull grey, I used a white colored pencil to sketch my design on the hull and then carefully blocked in the shapes. When I was satisfied with the emblem, I highlighted in the same manner as the rest of the tank.

The side and front hatches are from Forge World. I painted the crew model as a Techmarine rather than a standard trooper to break up the monotony of grey and gold. Right now the model is in pristine condition, right from the manufactorum, but I plan on adding battle damage and weathering.

September 30, 2012

The ensign is a conversion of one of the troopers. I cut off the sword from his right hand and drilled it for the flag staff. Then I used some modeling putty to re-sculpt part of the hand where I trimmed away the hilt guard and add a sash and feather. The bow on the hip is probably anachronistic but there are some sketches by Mark Allen that show officers with sashes worn in this manner and I thought it looked cool! The pic on the left is at a crude stage but somehow I neglected to take another photo of the finished sculpt... oh, well. I am just starting to attempt more ambitious conversions and am even trying my hand at complete sculpts. I will of course post my efforts...

The squadrons look great ranked up, but my quick and easy photo set-up doesn't allow me to fit both squadrons in the shot! I'll have to arrange some 'action' shots on terrain sometime soon, but that requires a more complex arrangement with studio lighting, etc. and I wanted to get these guys on the blog.

On the painting table next are the Nassau-Saarbrucken-Ottweiler battalion, a unit of converged Dutch grenadiers, Schomberg's Huguenot Horse regiment, and King Billy Himself. After that three Huguenot foot battalions, some artillery, and a few brigade officers and my Williamite army will be finished (for now).

September 28, 2012

The addition of the Space Marine Librarian gives me psychic support that my force has been lacking so far and it's never bad to have an extra character. The Command Squad adds extra support for my Space Marine Captain and helps keep from being so easily targeted. Finally, I like to field lots of Troops in my army for those all important objective grabs so I painted up a second Tactical Squad. My army is up to 46 models which is very respectable for Space Marines!

I've decided to target my armies for 1850-points for now which seems to be a fairly popular tournament point total... not that I'll be taking part in such events, but the logic behind the total is to allow a good variety of stuff while still finishing battles in a reasonable amount of time, which suits me perfectly. For November expect to see my Red Scorpions gain reinforcements in the form of a couple of Heavy Support choices! Back to Tyranids for October...

September 22, 2012

My partner, Barry Hilton, has gone crackers! The next wave of horse is on the way from Warfare Miniatures and 'wave' barely captures what's coming. There are nearly 60 new cuirassiers that will be available soon. You will be able to order armored troopers with full cuirass or breast plates only, both over and under their coats. There are also models with English or German style helmets, hats, tricorns, or bareheaded. Most have the option to be modeled with sword or pistol. Finally there are a variety of officers, standard bearers, and musicians. If that's not enough, all of these models may be ordered on standing horses or galloping horses!

You can lots more samples in the LoA Gallery and they will soon be available in the shop!

September 19, 2012

Just added the finishing touches on my next battalion - a German regiment in Dutch service raised and command by William III's cousin, Prince Albrecht of Brandenburg.

The model on the left is another conversion. The original model came from the artillery crew packs and had a spyglass in his left hand. I removed the glass and added the sword. I also added the eye patch with a tiny blob of green stuff to lend a more sinister air to this officer.

Next up Nassau-Saarbrucker-Ottweiler... very similar to the above unit, but with darker grey coats and red facings. The officers will again be in blue and red.

This will give me most of the front line foot units at the Boyne and the most often mentioned units of horse from accounts I've read - a very respectable force of twelve battalions of foot and six squadrons of horse. Note that the number of squadrons for horse is Beneath the Lily Banner units, not historical organization. Those units listed as one squadron end up with 4-8 models (which will be 6 on the game table) when historical strengths are rendered at 1:35. Those with 9 models or more were granted two squadron status.

The Brandenburg battalion is up next. I am really hoping to have the Williamites finished by the end of the year so I can start on the army of King James II!

September 8, 2012

The first squadron awaiting the final touches (finishing the base and adding the flag)...

The ensign would probably have had a blue coat, but the unit was beginning to look a bit too colorful! I wanted to keep the red coats dominate. You can see the second squadron assembled in the background (and my second battalion of Dutch Guard, also only lacking finished bases and flags).

Final pics next weekend - I'll have some progress shots of the second regiment of Wolseley's Horse and the start of the Brandenburg regiment of foot.

September 3, 2012

Barry and the lads put on a demo at Partizan 2 last weekend with nearly 700 Warfare Miniatures on the table!

Above is one my favorite units so far (painted and photographed by Barry Hilton), Creagh's Jacobite Foot. There are lots of photos of the action at Partizan 2 and more pics of the new cavalry in the LoA gallery (both sporting lots of my flags)!

Have I mentioned how much I loathe undercoating models with a brush? I can paint an infantry model, highlights and all, in the time it takes me to paint ten infantry models black. Spray paint takes a little experience to get good results and minimize touch ups, but once you master the process it is a huge time saver. I find myself with little enough time to paint these days and I try to spend that time finishing models!

That said, on Friday I received my first regiments of Warfare Miniatures horse in the mail (watch for a detailed review soon). I wasted no time assembling them, but it was RAINING thins morning. Never mind the impossibility of spray painting in the rain, high humidity often produces poor results as well, so even if it stopped soon I didn't want to spray these models. If I wanted to start painting I was going to have to undercoat a few by hand.

I decided to try one of Citadel's new 'Technical Paints' called Imperial Primer. I still haven't had much time to mess around with much of what I got in the Citadel Paint Bundle, so this was my first time using this. The paint is thinner than 'ordinary' Citadel paints, so there is no need to mix it with water to avoid obscuring the details. It also has a high concentration of pigment and adheres well to metal (unlike thinned down acrylics normally do). When it goes on, the paint looks a little streaky, but it dried to an even coat. The results were indistinguishable from a pair of models I had setting nearby that had been undercoated with Chaos Black spray paint - in fact maybe better as the models painted with spray paint appear satin while the those painted with Imperial Primer are matte.

Anyway, I'm off to paint some cavalry (photos and a review soon). If you undercoat models with black primer by hand, give the Citadel Imperial Primer a try.

August 31, 2012

40k Friday - Here are the results of another round of my 'A Tale of One Gamer' project for August!

This brings me around 1000 points and gives me a battlefield legal force. The Hive Tyrant gives me terrifying combat abilities while the Tyrant Guard will help keep this monster on the table. Though they lost a bit of power in 6th edition, Genestealers are still one of the scariest close combat units around and I'm happy to add them to my army. I've pretty much reached the end of what I had on hand (the Tyrant Guard are my first new purchase for this project). I still have a carnifex kit and a handful of gaunts so going forward they will make up the next round of reinforcements. Not sure what I'll add to make up the rest of my next 500 point goal - off to the store!

I'm planning to play the first game of a mini-campaign in September and will post the results when I can.

August 27, 2012

Yet more flags for the growing range - this time dragoons from the Boyne/Aughrim campaign...

With this release, that brings me to more than 100 regiments of foot, 35 regiments of horse, and 18 regiments of dragoons! I'll be filling in a few stragglers from the Ireland and Scotland campaigns (I just realized I left out Schomberg's regiment of horse which one of the first on the list for my personal collection), then moving on other theaters!